Open Chemistry

An invited article on Open Chemistry discussing the importance of Open Access and Open Data and stressing the emerging role of the blogospher

Visions of a Semantic Molecular Future

Additional booklet insert distributed at the VSMF Symposium held at the Unilever Centre on 2011-01-17The event looks forward. Scholarship (universities, research, teaching, publishing) has been slow to take up the opportunities of this digital century. This is an opportunity to identify and build the future.EPSRC (Pathways to Impact award). Unilever plc (Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics

Educational Developmentalists Divided? Patrick Cannon, Patrick Hillery and the Economics of Education in the Early 1960s

The catalytic effect of the OECD-linked study that produced Investment in Education is a much celebrated episode of Ireland’s modernisation. A remarkably broad cross-departmental consensus supported the initiative. Bureaucratic caution and ministerial self-preservation were set aside to allow a “warts and all” portrait of Irish education to be painted by the study team. Special efforts were made to focus public attention on the findings of a damning report that legitimated a quickening pace of government action to increase access to an expanded, rationalised and reoriented education system. But, as well as developmentalist triumph over conservatism in the education field, there was also significant division between state and civil society developmentalists. This is examined through an analysis of the relationship between the Federation of Lay Catholic Secondary Schools and the Department of Education.

These confabulations are guaranteed to improve your marriage! Toward a teleological theory of confabulation

Confabulation is typically understood to be dysfunctional. But this understanding neglects the phenomenon’s potential benefits. In fact, we think that the benefits of non-clinical confabulation provide a better foundation for a general account of confabulation. In this paper, we start from these benefits to develop a social teleological account of confabulation. Central to our account is the idea that confabulation manifests a kind of willful ignorance. By understanding confabulation in this way, we can provide principled explanations for the difference between clinical and non-clinical cases of confabulation and the extent to which confabulation is rational

Muintir na Tire Seeks Funding for Rural Sociology in 1960s Ireland

working paperMuintir na Tire’s role in the emergence of the discipline of Sociology in Ireland is usually acknowledged with reference to the Limerick Rural Survey (1958-64) that it initiated, part-funded and published. In the first half of the 1960s the movement also put proposals to the Irish government and sought US foundation grants for a centre or institute that would operate in the field of rural sociology and form part of Muintir na Tire’s organisational structure. Although Taoiseach Sean Lemass was positively disposed towards these initatives, opposition from the Departments of Agriculture, Education and Finance prevailed against them and Muintir na Tire was ultimately to find itself completely excluded from participation in the state-resourced institutional arrangements for carrying out social/sociological research in Ireland

Lindsay Crawford's 'Impossible Demand'? The Southern Irish Dimension of the Independent Orange Project

The Magheramorne Manifesto of the Independent Orange Order has been hailed as a bold attempt from an unlikely quarter to positively address the sectarian divisions and regional polarisation of early 20th century Ireland. But the Order's leading light, Lindsay Crawford, has also been indicted for formulating an 'empty radicalism' which demanded changes in the field of education that it was impossible for the Catholic community to accept. This working paper reassesses Crawford's ideological project in the light of hitherto underused sources of evidence. It highlights convergence between Crawford's thinking and that of 'Irish Ireland' activists in movements such as the Gaelic League and Sinn Fein. It argues that heterodox educational views were prevalent to a significant extent among the Irish Irelanders to whom Crawford looked for a positive response to his national regeneration project. The case is also made that, in the absence of unanimous acceptance of their desirability among lay Catholics, the support of Protestants - and particularly that of Crawford's fellow Irish Anglicans - provided existing school management arrangements with a vital source of sustenance.

The Blue Obelisk Community

Poster presented at the VSMF symposium held at the Unilever Centre on 2011-01-17The Internet has brought together a group of chemists who are driven by wanting to do things better, but are frustrated with the Closed systems that chemists currently have to work with. they share a belief in the concepts of Open Data, Open Standards and Open Source. And they express this in software, data, algorithms, specifications, tutorials, demonstrations, articles and anything that helps get the message across. [http://www.blueobelisk.org/

The social, political and legal aspects of Text and Data Mining (TDM)

The ideas of textual or data mining (TDM) and subsequent analysis go back hundreds if not thousands of years. Originally carried out manually, textual and data analysis has long been a tool which has enabled new insights to be drawn from text corpora. However, for the potential benefits of TDM to be unlocked, a number of non-technological barriers need to be overcome. These include legal uncertainty resulting from complicated copyright, database rights and licensing, the fact that some publishers are not currently embracing the opportunities TDM offers the academic community, and a lack of awareness of TDM among many academics, alongside a skills gap

The participation of women in multidisciplinary action teams

This paper argues the case for increasing the participation of women in multidisciplinary action teams as a means for making better use of gender diversity. We argue that conventional diversity management practices involve a narrow approach towards increasing women’s participation in employment. We suggest it is imperative that organisations and multidisciplinary action teams learn to integrate skilled and talented women and men into a single, cohesive work culture that enhances teams’ performing capacities. Based on recent work by the authors, we then build on the belief that women are a key resource for improving the integrative and interpretive abilities of teams, including the capacity of the team generally to deal with difficult and complex scenarios. The paper builds a relationship between feminine values, team-member diversity, and communication skills such as listening and speaking up. In particular, we examine some evidence relating to the communication patterns of women and how they may assist multi-disciplinary action teams.diversity management; feminine values; teams; women